Canada’s pilots and air traffic controllers call for review to improve aviation system

Canada’s commercial pilots and air traffic controllers are urging the government to launch a top-to-bottom review of the aviation sector, pointing to staff shortages and a profit-first approach they say have led to the air travel system’s decline in reliability.

A report from the workers’ unions, to be released at a press conference in Ottawa on Monday, makes 22 recommendations, including more investment in training for aviation jobs and the restoration of air service at remote and rural locations.

Tim Perry, head of the Air Line Pilots Association in Canada, said the women and men who work in aviation must be part of a move to draft a national aviation strategy, along with government, regulators, airlines and other commercial operators.

“We’re not saying that we have the answers,” Mr. Perry said in an interview. “We’re saying that good outcomes come from good process and … a good outcome is a sustainable, resilient aviation industry that serves everybody.”

The labour groups that authored the report in consultation with other unions together have 15,000 members who work at domestic airlines and Nav Canada, the air navigation service responsible for airspace over Canada and the North Atlantic Ocean.

The unions are issuing the report ahead of the busy holiday travel season, a time when winter storms, full planes and short staffing often combine to create chaos marked by late or cancelled flights and lost luggage. The resurgence in demand for air travel after pandemic restrictions lifted revealed the ill-preparedness of the government, Canada’s airports and private aviation companies.

“The fear of flying is no longer the fear of getting on an airplane,” said Nick von Schoenberg, head of the Unifor division that represents Nav Canada’s air traffic controllers. “It’s the fear of whether your airplane is going to actually depart on time” or whether your suitcase will go missing,

The International Civil Aviation Organization handed Canada’s aviation system a grade of 64 out 100 last year – a poor ranking in a report one observer described as scathing. (Canada had scored 95 in the previous audit, in 2005.) The UN agency found multiple lapses in Transport Canada’s oversight of the industry, including pilot licensing and medical clearances, fatigue management and air traffic controller staffing levels. By some ICAO rankings, Canada scored last among the Group 7 countries.

“The audit’s results are proof that the alarm bells workers have been ringing are in fact warranted, and that we need to take a serious look at our system,” the unions’ report says.

The shortfalls highlighted by ICAO, along with a lack of investment in employee training, recruitment and airport infrastructure, combine to form a fragile system that easily fails when hit by disruption, Mr. Perry said. “It could be an ice storm. It could be if the flu runs through the air tower or at the base of an airline.”

And the consequences are more serious than messed up holiday plans, he warned. Northern communities that rely on air service for food and medical supplies feel the effects of pilot shortages and route cuts every day, Mr. Perry said.

“The country was built by the railway but it’s sustained by aviation and the infrastructure to sustain that is really, really important. In a remote community you really do depend on aviation … in a far more fundamental way.”

Mr. von Schoenberg, who represents about 1,500 air traffic controllers, said Nav Canada’s operations are chronically short of staff, a hangover from COVID-19 training shutdowns and retirements. The problem is most acute at Canada’s two largest airports, Vancouver International Airport and Toronto Pearson International Airport, where takeoffs and landings are often slowed because of staff shortages, he said.

A J.D. Power customer satisfaction survey in September ranked Pearson as the second-worst of the largest North American Airports.

“I’m not flying through Toronto this Christmas,” Mr. von Schoenberg said. “I don’t want to scare anybody, but I’m the president of the air traffic controllers and I’m going to book something that avoids Toronto. Unfortunately, I live in Vancouver so it’s hard to avoid that one. But if I could, I’d avoid that one, too.”

The report’s recommendations include:

· Accelerate the legislated review of the Canada Transport Act to create a national aviation strategy;

· Invest more in aviation worker training, with a focus on Indigenous and female students as well as those from remote regions;

· Assess staffing needs across the system to ensure it can meet passenger demand;

· Preserve collective bargaining rights.